A blog for food lovers:
“There are certain people, whom certain herbs, the good digestion of disturbs. Henry the VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon because of her reckless use of tarragon.” – attributed to Ogden Nash

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Sunday, August 31, 2008

By the time I got to my camera, the family had already had their way with this cake, which was a hit with our 9- and 13-year-old nephews as well as the adults over Labor Day weekend. I heated up some jarred hot fudge sauce because most of us are chocolate fiends, but everyone wanted the orange sauce too, either on the accompanying vanilla ice cream or over the whole mess.

The hardest thing about this recipe, which I found in its original form at http://www.allrecipes.com/, is finding the Duncan Hines Orange Supreme Cake mix Ilike to substitute for the yellow. Meijer carries it for under $2, or you can find it online by the case at https://buythecase.net/. The first time I made it, I used Jell-O orange pudding mix, which I can no longer find anywhere. You can use vanilla, but I like the extra zip from the lemon. If you can't find orange extract in your area, you can use the lemon the original recipe called for, or get a 4-oz. bottle of orange for about $6 at http://surlatable.com/. I nearly always use slightly diluted frozen orange juice concentrate when recipes call for orange juice, as this one did. Another way to kick it up a notch.

Grease or spray a 10-inch Bundt pan. Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.In a large bowl, stir together cake and pudding mixes. Make a well in the center and pour in 3/4 cup orange juice mixture, oil, eggs and orange extract. Beat on low speed until blended. Scrape bowl, and beat 4 minutes on medium speed. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake in preheated oven for about 50 minutes, but start checking at 40 minutes to make sure you don't overbake cake.

Meanwhile, in a saucepan over medium heat, cook 2/3 cup orange juice, sugar and butter for two minutes.

When cake is done, place pan on rack, poke holes in cake with fork, cake tester or toothpick, and pour half of glaze over cake. Let cool in pan. Loosen cake around edges with knife, then turn out onto a plate and flip onto serving plate. Serve with a little sauce over top.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

I originally found this recipe at http://www.bbonline.com/, one of my favorite sources for breakfast and brunch dishes. Now I see the same recipe all over, though not on the original site. Maybe the inn, Derby Hill in Loveland, Colo., is closed or no longer listed.Bed and breakfasts usually offer very good fare. I’ve only eaten at one or two that did not, and that food was better than you’d get in a hotel’s standard complimentary breakfast. The hosts often are interesting, and only a few we’ve encountered have been … weird.A woman at an inn in Silverton, Colo., ignored our arrival in favor of washing her SUV so she could make a point to her boyfriend, who apparently had neglected the chore. But her French toast was great and the room beautiful.The suggestions for trimming fat are mine, though you go a long way just by skipping the usual pie crust. Someday I’ll try it without meat and with more veggies. We were quite happy with the potato crust; you can tell by the photo, which shows how large and unevenly we cut our pieces.

Press thawed hash browns between paper towels to remove moisture. Fit hash browns into greased 10-inch pie plate, pressing to form crust. Brush crust with melted butter, making certain to brush top edges, or spray generously with cooking spray.Bake at 425° for 25 minutes. Remove from oven. Sprinkle cheeses and ham evenly over bottom of crust. Beat half and half with eggs and seasoned salt. Pour over cheeses and ham.Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out clean.

The bed and breakfast site also has some great French toast and coffeecake recipes.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

This recipe is from Seafood Pasta and Noodles, The New Classics by Rosina Tinari Wilson. In addition to wonderful recipes, it contains beautiful watercolor illustrations by Marlene McLoughlin.

Sometimes I make all the parts of the salad the day before, and combine them quickly the next morning. I try to jam it back in the fridge before I “taste” too much of it. Something about fusilli is very appealing, besides the fact that the word sounds a bit like “feel silly.”
Use a fat-free mayonnaise substitute, and it’s a healthful dish.

Toss cooked fusilli with olive oil and salt; chill well.
Combine chopped peppers, green onions, and cooked salmon (with the additional olive oil and lemon juice if using. We liked it without the extra oil). Chill.
For aioli, blend mayo with garlic and rosemary. Toss with fusilli, then with salmon mixture. Chill well and serve cold on a bed of mixed greens, if desired.
Serves 6.

Note: To char and remove skins from bell peppers, I like to halve them and scoop out seeds, place them skin side up on a pan and broil them till sizzling and mostly black. Pop them into a paper bag and let sit for 10 minutes or so. (Place on a plate or layers of paper towels so you don't get a puddle of pepper juice on your counter.) Peel off the skin when cool enough to handle and chop or slice.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Shame on me. I bought groceries without a menu plan, shopping the sales. I don’t usually do that because you have to go out shopping again after you figure out what to cook. This week I said “Fuggeddaboud id!” (Think Mickey Blue Eyes.)

So with my purchases in mind, I searched through cookbooks and the Internet for a recipe for a gratin with potatoes and eggplant. I was about to just make something up when I found this on Ashbury’s Aubergines Web site at http://www.aubergines.org/.

It was tempting to load this casserole up with more than the 2 or so cups of cheese called for, but a trip to my doctor this week (and the number on her scale) dissuaded me from adding more fat. I did add a bit more Parmesan and bread crumbs just by virtue of not measuring. I skipped the green pepper, which is banned from the house by my husband Joe, doubled the onion and used it in two layers, increased the garlic and added dried Italian herbs to the seasoning layers. I also peeled the eggplant, because I sometimes find the skin unappetizing. I added a little sugar to the tomato sauce, something an Italian taught me years ago.

Be sure to use nonstick foil or spray regular foil to avoid lifting off the top layer of cheese when the casserole is ready for the final baking time.

Next time, I may try lining the pan with the potato slices, because I think it would taste even better than the eggplant as it gets crusty during the baking time of as long as two hours. I’ll just put the eggplant slices on the next layer up. I may add spinach for more vitamins and color.

Leftovers microwave fine, but it really is best fresh out of the oven before the crispy edges soften. We had it with homemade cornbread and sliced fresh peaches.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and lightly spray a large baking dish or 4-quart Dutch oven. Arrange eggplant slices on bottom and along sides of dish. Layer an onion over top. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, 1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil, a fourth of the garlic, 2 tablespoons bread crumbs, a tablespoon Parmesan, and a fourth of the mozzarella. Arrange potato slices, overlapping slightly, over eggplant. Again, sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper, 1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil, a fourth of the garlic, 2 tablespoons bread crumbs, a tablespoon Parmesan, and a fourth of the mozzarella. Arrange peppers and onions over potatoes and repeat the seasoning layer. Top with zucchini.

In a separate bowl, crush tomatoes by hand (a potato masher can be handy here) and stir in the remaining garlic, olive oil, sugar, and a little salt and pepper. Spoon mixture over vegetables, and sprinkle with remaining bread crumbs and cheeses. Cover dish tightly with foil and bake for about 90 minutes. Remove foil and continue baking for 30 minutes or until the vegetables are tender and the top a bit browned. Let sit for a few minutes to make it easier to cut and remove servings to plates.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

I love cooking and baking almost as much as I enjoy eating. I’m all about kitchen experiments, or as Alton Brown says, playing with my food. I seldom follow a recipe exactly anymore. I’ll at least increase the garlic or cinnamon or substitute another herb for the cilantro that I don’t like so much. Sometimes the recipe is just a suggestion, kind of like speed limits or the Ten Commandments are for some people.What I hope to do here -- God willing and pilot error not withstanding -- is share some recipes, cooking tips and various observations that may or may not have anything to do with what normally goes on in a kitchen. I'll test recipes from cookbooks and periodicals that catch my eye, and there will be at least one photo of each one (this is where pilot error may occur). Everyone who cooks welcomes a new, tested recipe, and I welcome you to my blog.For a while my posts will be intermittent, because we recently moved, still need to sell our house in Akron, and my sister and I are busy sorting through mountains of stuff in my parents' old condo. Then we get to put THAT on the market. My blog name was born when I stumbled upon the above rhyme online about King Henry supposedly dumping his wife because of her use of herbs. To this I say, "You go, girl." Didn't the man eat everything in sight? How picky could he be?

Being a journalist by trade, I tried to prove that the very clever Ogden Nash wrote the rhyme (only one of the many references mentioned him), but I never could. And believe me, I looked through as many library books as I could find after my Internet search proved fruitless. I gave up because I'm not anal retentive, after all. I'm not. Or maybe it's that I'm not obsessive compulsive. Are those hyphenated? Wait, let me go look it up....